Jenna Watches Fall TV Pilots So You Don’t Have To: Good Doctor, The Brave, Ghosted

The Good Doctor

Doogie Howser + House + Autism. It’s nice to see more TV shows featuring autistic characters in a normal way, not as victims or villains but as people. While I can’t speak to how true the portrayal of the main character’s autism is, the pilot is full of compelling characters with an interesting story. While the board at Shaun Murphy’s (Freddie Highmore, aka Norman Bates from the Bates Motel TV series) new hospital debates whether to allow a surgical resident with autism, Shaun saves a young boy’s life at the airport using MacGyver’d surgical tools. In standard trope fashion, the video of Shaun’s miraculous save makes it online and the board has to accept him, at least temporarily, or face bad publicity.

One thing I do find refreshing is the bluntness of Shaun’s personal reactions. His autism leaves him with an analytical face to the people he meets, leading him to call out characters who go from hating to liking him after he proves confident and characters who use their abrasive arrogance as a crutch.

Airs On: ABC, Hulu

Verdict: Watch!

The Brave

CSI + Team America: World Police. If you’re into America overstepping their military reach to save US citizens, you might like this. It’s not for me.

Airs On: NBC, Hulu

Verdict: Pass.

Ghosted

Craig Robinson (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation) combine forces for this paranormal buddy-cop comedy. Adam plays Dr. Max Jennifer, a disgraced astrophysicist who lost his wife to alien abduction. Craig is Detective Leroy Wright, a former LAPD detective now stuck on mall duty. When an agent of the Bureau Underground goes missing and namedrops Max and Leroy to help, the two become uncomfortable partners as they try to locate the missing agent and not get killed by the strange paranormal stuff on the way.

The pilot has a strange balance of straight-man comedy that doesn’t sit quite right, but hopefully, that will smooth out in future episodes.